The radical notion that women are adults

Five rights feminism delivered for women, but doesn’t want to share with anyone else

Modern feminism, with its incessant whining and complaining and victim proclamations has quite rightly come under increasing fire not only from sites like this one, but in the mainstream media, too.

The recent brouhaha surrounding Jezebel placing a $10 000 bounty on Lena Dunham’s head, demanding to see the unretouched photos from her recent Vogue shoot, serves as an illustration of just how far feminism has strayed from its original roots. In a fit of mean-girl spite to make Regina George herself blush, Jezebel was absolutely positive that Vogue had grossly retouched Dunham, because there is no way she is actually that pretty. Lena is ugly! Let’s prove how ugly that bitch is! Someone get me the unretouched photos, stat! Here’s $10 000 for the favor.

Charming. Turns out Vogue hadn’t retouched Lena all that much, and Jezebel ended up looking like exactly the group of bitter, jealous cunts they are. And “good, it’s about time” is all I can say to that.

With feminism seeming to be on a self-destruct cycle all of its own, I thought this might be a good time to reflect on the good things feminism has accomplished and then ponder just why it is that feminism doesn’t want those gains to be extended to everyone?

Could it be that feminism isn’t about equality at all, but more about power and dominance?

Let’s investigate.

1. The right to reproductive freedom

Margaret Sanger and Otto Bobsein are credited with coining the term “birth control” and were early proponents of the wide spread adoption of family planning.

By the 1960s the birth control pill was available for women and unleashed a social revolution that broke the bonds between sex and reproduction. The ability to choose motherhood yet still have sex offered women a freedom that had never been possible for all of human history, and women took full advantage of that freedom. Freedom given to them by mostly male scientists, by the way.

Women had the children they wanted, when they wanted them.

The 1973 Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court Decision further solidified women’s reproductive rights, allowing them to abort children they did not want before they were born.

Recent attacks on abortion rights are rightly seen as an affront to womankind itself. The right to choose parenthood is absolutely essential if women are to realize their full human potential.

That is not a statement that is contested with any vigor by feminists. Planned parenthood. There can be no other way.

Curious, then, that the push to make parenthood a choice for all humans is resisted by feminists specifically. Amanda Marcotte, writing for The Raw Story is completely dismissive of that half of humanity which would also like the right to choose parenthood.

There are absolutely writers who question why feminism appears to be concerned only with women’s choice, but few will venture further than curiosity.

What is it about feminism that insists women must have the right to summarily confiscate male assets while retaining the absolute right to choose for themselves whether they will dedicate any resources at all to parenthood?

Equality seems to have gone missing from the argument.

2. The right to have rape taken seriously

Caveat: let’s keep in mind that raping white women, or even the allegation of having done so, was always a serious crime when the defendant happened to be a black man. It was generally punishable by death.

In 1793, 17-year-old Lanah Sawyer was pushed into a brothel and raped by a seemingly respectable man who had taken her for a walk in the streets of New York. In court, her assailant’s attorney said she had basically consented to sex when she agreed to go walking with him, and warned the jury against placing “the life of a citizen in the hands of a woman.” The man was acquitted.

By the 1970s, the National Organization for Women was busy drawing attention to the leniency most rapists received and the brutal questioning victims were forced to endure.

The Oscar-winning film The Accused, starring Jody Foster as a drunk woman who was gang-raped on a pool table as bar patrons watched was a watershed moment that convinced Americans that rape was a serious crime and that perpetrators deserved to be punished.

The subsequent rape-hysteria of contemporary feminism is not the topic of this post, but I will remind readers that rape hysteria is utterly out of control. As if you needed such a reminder, right?

What I am interested in is the curious phenomena of feminists dismissing male rape statistics and willfully ignoring the fact that boys are raped more often than girls. Not to mention giggling over actual cases of male rape.

Feminism succeeded in making rape a serious crime. When the victim is a woman.

Why then is feminism so reluctant to extend the same sympathy and legal protections to male victims that are afforded female victims? And just to be clear, I don’t mean sympathy extended by the courts or the general public. I mean sympathy extended by feminists, who insist that every woman who claims she has been raped must be believed, no matter how fanciful or spurious the claim.

What is that about? Again, it doesn’t look much like equality from where I sit.

3. The right to have mental health issues taken seriously

Anxiety, depression, despair, hopelessness, traumatic responses to events long passed, anorexia and suicidal thoughts were often thought to be the product of women’s innate hysteria, often relieved through the thoughtful (ahem) application of vibrating machines (double ahem) applied to a woman’s genitals (holy ahem!).

Feminists worked hard to demonstrate that women’s mental health issues were linked inextricably to their life circumstances, and rightly so. Simply dismissing the despair of some women as inherent to women was grossly insulting and reductionist.

Interestingly enough, our modern feminist sisters have no problem claiming that men’s mental health issues are inherent to men and masculinity: it is the very concept of “manhood” that creates mental illness. Describing men as “emotionless dickbots”, Anna North proposes that all masculinity needs is a good dose of shame.

But do men need, in addition, “a positive, masculine gender identity?” It’s something of a strange concept — few feminists would ever say that women needed “a positive, feminine gender identity.” While plenty of women take pride in being female, “femininity” is so loaded with patriarchal expectation that, for feminists, it’s kind of a dirty word. This may not be a bad thing — in fact, I’d argue that “masculine” should go the same way.

What is going on here? Women have genuine, human emotional problems that are most certainly not the simple result of being women, but mental health problems in men is proof of “toxic masculinity”?

Really?

Interesting.

4. The right to NOT be assumed natural caregivers

Feminists have long railed against the stereotype that women are “naturally more loving” than men, and therefore better suited to be caregivers for small children.

Of course, these very same women hire other women to care for their children when they are occupied with something more important, and are reluctant to even contemplate hiring an occasional babysitter who is male, but we’ll ignore the inconsistency for the moment.

If women have no innate advantage over men when it comes to caring for small children, why then are feminist organizations so opposed to shared parenting and automatic joint custody when parental relationships fail?

What’s up with that? Are men and women equally suited to be providers of care, or are they not?

5. The right to genital integrity

Feminism has worked hard to lift the veil on the grotesquely cruel practice of genital mutilation, but only if the genitals in question are of the female variety.

Indeed, some feminist websites openly mock men for being anti-circumcision, claiming the “intactivist” movement arises because men feel the “world revolves around their dicks”.

As opposed to all those mutilated girls who probably think the world revolves around their vaginas?

Circumcision: only cruel when it’s done to girls.

What are we to make of this curious state of modern feminism?

Reproductive rights, but only for women.

Rape awareness, but only when women are victims.

Mental health awareness, but only when women are affected.

Assumption of natural caregiving ability, but only when the option is to have a man care for children.

Genital integrity, but only for girls.

How can anyone possibly see feminism as a movement to achieve equality between men and women when feminist organizations and individuals actively work to ensure that the hard fought rights their older feminist sisters won apply to women, and women only?

I personally think it’s important to separate modern feminists from their historical counterparts. When we critique feminism, I think we should make it clear that we are critiquing modern feminism. Some might argue that the current state of affairs is not a bug of the feminist system, but a feature: that feminism intended to end up exactly where we are. I’m not convinced that is a productive conversation to have.

I think we can celebrate the triumphs of feminism while being wholly and deeply critical of the limitations. There is no room left to maneuver in modern feminism.

The rights women have gained for women now need to be extended to everyone. Reproductive freedom, the right to make rape accusations and be given a fair trial, the right to have mental health issues taken seriously, the right to be assumed a loving caregiver and the right to genital integrity.

You won’t find those issues championed at NOW or Ms. or feministing or Jezebel or any other mainstream feminist media site.

But you will find them championed here.

Feminists have completed their work and now have nothing to do but circle their wagons and try to keep others from achieving the same rights.

Well, when they’re not busy calling other women ugly and paying $10 000 for proof of just how ugly.

Just to head off the obvious, “female circumcision” is a euphemism. The equivalent operation on a male child would be termed “emasculation” because that is the equivalent part removed. There is no female equivalent to male circumcision.

Absolutely, but I’ve not heard of such a thing. Then again, this topic makes my toes try to crawl back into my feet, so I may not be fully versed on all the variations. I haven’t the faintest idea what the purpose of such a procedure would be, though.

Dan

Excision of the clitoral hood is a pretty common form of genital mutilation. It’s also illegal in the United States:

18 U.S.C. § 116:

(a) Except as provided in subsection (b), whoever knowingly circumcises, excises, or infibulates the whole or any part of the labia majora or labia minora or clitoris of another person who has not attained the age of 18 years shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 5 years, or both.

(b) A surgical operation is not a violation of this section if the operation is—
(1) necessary to the health of the person on whom it is performed, and is performed by a person licensed in the place of its performance as a medical practitioner; or
(2) performed on a person in labor or who has just given birth and is performed for medical purposes connected with that labor or birth by a person licensed in the place it is performed as a medical practitioner, midwife, or person in training to become such a practitioner or midwife.

Women are protected by law, where men are not, even when we are talking about excision of anatomically equivalent parts (the clitoral hood and the prepuce).

With that said, your assumption that male prepucectomy and cliterectomy are equivalent is, I think, unfounded. Prepucetomy is more damaging to a person’s sexuality than is cliterectomy, given the need for foreskin for any sexual pleasure to be available to men. Cliterectomy does not damage the vaginal mucosa, or other parts of the body other than the clitoris, e.g. the “g-spot”, which provide sexual plasure to women. On the other hand, prepucetomy removes the parts of a man’s penis which are most attuned to sexual pleasure (the ridged band and the frenulum); prevents effective stimulation of the preputial mucosa; and keratinizes the glans of the penis and preputial mucosa.

FP

“given the need for foreskin for any sexual pleasure to be available to men”

I was circumcised at twelve for medical reasons and I still get sexual pleasure so not sure what you are smoking.

Dan

1) If you can’t compare sexual activity before and after you have foreskin, I think it’s hard to determine exactly what the feeling of sexual pleasure consists of. Of course, tons of men who have had their prepuces removed enjoy sex and go to great lengths to have it. But there a lot of things going on, hormonally, during sex other than pleasure that motivate men to have sex and make us enjoy it.

I was circumcised near birth and have been “restoring” my foreskin (it’ll probably take about 5 years, I’m about halfway). At least my personal experience is that I didn’t experience much pleasure until my skin was loose enough that the “inner foreskin” (preputial mucosa) could move during sexual activity and were not fixed in place as a result of how taut the skin was during an erection. It’s also possible that you had a less invasive circumcision than did I, and so never had tight or painful erections after the procedure. If there’s any slack in your skin when you have an erection, this is probably the case.

2) I suspect that your your circumcision was unnecessary. I assume you had “phimosis” and your surgeon didn’t mention the possibility of waiting (“phimosis” is potentially normal in 12 year olds), or stretching the skin.

Mina

They will also do a ritual “nick” of a female’s clitoris in order to comply with whatever religious traditions. There is no PURPOSE of course, just as there is no purpose to male circumcision. It is a procedure designed to diminish a person’s adult sexual enjoyment, period. That we do it to baby boys when they are unable to consent is truly disgusting. What kind of a bully presents an innocent baby to have his genitals cut on and what kind of a bully agrees to do it? Great web site: http://www.stopcirc.com/

Aaditya

A circumcised man can still have sexual pleasure, but FGM is just screwed up. It basically makes the woman into a baby making machine. And this is right?

Actually, reported prevalence of sexual dysfunction for both Wolffian and Mullerian genital mutilation is about 1 in 10, as I’ve noted, but thanks for willfully ignoring the evidence to construct your narrative. For that matter, if Mullerian Genital Mutilation caused 100% sexual dysfunction, given it’s order-of-magnitude lower prevalence, the same number of CAFABs and CAMABs would have had the ability to enjoy sex taken away from them.

Wilson

Ritual cutting is ritual cutting. If baby girls go so much as an ear piercing feminists would enlighten us about our barbarous misogyny. And some boys do lose it all due to mishaps (and let’s us note that this would actually be worse than most of the female “equivalents”)

Actually, Type II “FGM” (Way to be cissexist about it, not like there aren’t a few boys having their Mullerian genitalia cut on or anything…) removes the labia minora and the clitoral hood. Do you know what that’s analogous to? As in, the same tissue, just arranged differently based on the signals the body gets as it’s putting itself together?

The foreskin.

Unsurprisingly reported prevalence of sexual dysfunction is similar too. About 10%

Nope, that’s a lie. Type II FGM (nomenclature problems aside) removes labia and clitoral hood, the same tissue (differently arranged) that is removed by circumcision, which is also why 1 in 10 victims of BOTH PROCEDURES report significant sexual dysfunction.

Good blog, JB. But there may be more rights that feminism wants only women to have, that you missed:
– the right to have domestic violence shelters available to your gender
– the right to have university courses and departments focused solely on the issues of your gender
– (in Canada), the right to have public monuments erected in major cities dedicated to “women killed by men”

Feminism is far from over. Dominance and control are not inherently feminist, but inherently female.

It’s in the nature of women to seek dominance and control. As long as hormones control a woman’s emotions the need to control their effects will always be there. The Feminine Imperative at work is the very exercise of control over the effects of estrogen and progesterone on a woman’s being.

A woman needs it to stay sane in a future-oriented society. Her hormones essentially keep her soul rooted in the earth and resident in the moment, but time and society must march on. The moment is past. It doesn’t last. While a woman may have a future time orientation and build a life in that horizontal trajectory, her hormones keep her alert and ready in the moment, ready to flee or take advantage of an opportunity.

The moment is everything to a woman’s soul. It’s singular vertical characteristic on the horizontal timeline is like entry into an infinite emotional plane – a gap under her and over her that can swallow her in the depths of despair or buoy her to the heights of euphoria. Once triggered, her hormones can draw her into that singularity and catapult her life from control to chaos in a heartbeat – and she knows it.

She also knows she doesn’t have the innate ability to control that emotional chaos herself. It can be triggered by a variety of unknown and unpredictable things, including a mere man with a swagger. Because of the insecurity of so many potential but unknown gaps in her path that can potentially swallow her heart, she needs to exercise control. She can’t just BE, knowing that emotional chaos is just a hormonal trigger away…and so she is driven by the need to control her emotional environment and find a safe haven. I suspect that for many women their whole lives are a battle to find a safe haven for their emotions.

A loving husband is the ideal sculptor of this emotional raw material. Whether it becomes a beautiful statue or a pile of rubble depends on the sculptor’s skill. A man has the innate capacity to sculpt a woman’s emotions and stand in the emotional gap for them. They can do so without risk to themselves by cultivating their alpha/beta traits and applying them judiciously. If men are perceived to be failing at this, it is completely normal for women to become insecure and look to control the situation. The thing is, of course, that men as a class are not failing at this…feminists have merely persuaded society that this is happening and so we have mass confusion about who’s on top.

To summarise my point, a woman’s desire for control is driven by fear of falling into an emotional hole. As long as this fear remains, their desire for control will remain.

I am intrigued by the viewpoint and would like to know if you have a source for this theory. I concur that woman is suppressed more by mother nature than by man. Thank goodness for menopause.

I think poor nutrition makes women extra crazy but they’ll do anything to be thin as a class construct. Meanwhile most nutrition information out there is industry-driven with women’s magazines being the worst. Starvation and hormone swings are not a good mix. Add modern poisons from cosmetics, office products, and cleaning products in a smaller brain and it is a dangerous brew. This craziness has become the norm..Feed a woman steak and eggs today! LOL!

But artificial pressures and delusions plague both sexes. It is time to recognize the sheer harm being performed on a grand scale by deliberate behavioral conditioning on the part of media and the schools. The human character is devolving.

Maybe women are just more targeted and susceptible to all the programming.

I concur that a good man makes all the difference and a good man does not capitulate to the nonsense narrative of “the American Dream”. Whereas timidity on the part of women.to change or diverge from the crowd is an obstacle. I had to have my own “aha” moment.

Meanwhile it is difficult sometimes to distinguish a psychopath from a hero because both want to remake your life.

because most feminists are more into making females dominate the world rather than gender equality…

JBfan

Unthinkable to say JB, but these people are supporting a strange female privilege racket. Ample evidence of this is the most damning part of feminism: the transphobia they display. Germaine Greer, Suzanne Moore, Julie Burchill, they’re all guilty of being horrendously hateful towards transwomen in particular whom they consider to be invading their territory. For all the talk about ‘male privilege/entitlement they shamelessly prop up a weird female version, and they still have the nerve to strawman even the most reasonable of their critics as ‘misogynists’.

jjrockmale

They also reserve the right to total government oversight of their men’s lives to be called in at a moments notice.

If women’s DV were ever brought to the light, no one would believe it right away thanks to decades of mental conditioning since we were all young.

The list includes advice on being cuckolded, led by your wife, androgynous relationship musts, and last, but certainly not least, being violated by your wife as discipline. I’m assuming for not being a real man, and thereby watching said “real man” when he comes over? Yuck, what a beta. He must get a yearly award or something.

That, to a man like me, is the like desiring castration and wearing a mock sailor suit with a dress in Thailand. Whooohoooo! All this time I was thinking I needed to be strong, valiant, and a pioneer in order to get the respect of my community; and all I needed to do was let a woman abuse me, and act like a male prostitute?

Please, I mean this, just kill me. Hahahahahahahahaha, because I am dying of laughter at this chumpstain.

What is it about feminism that insists women must have the right to summarily confiscate male assets while retaining the absolute right to choose for themselves whether they will dedicate any resources at all to parenthood?

But, a rabid feminist would not see the deep and clear truth in these statements. It requires some lengthy deprogramming.

Jezebel’s putative beef wasn’t with Lena Dunham. It was with Vogue and with the fashion media’s general practice of creating distorted images of physical perfection that inculcate self-doubt and needless anxiety in large segments of the female population. Jezebel’s premise was that Vogue was perpetrating a deceit by making Ms. Dunham its cover model and implying that “real” body types were finally being represented in a high-profile media outlet—while at the same altering her appearance to perpetrate the same unrealistic body standards.

Apparently, however, the amount of editing of Ms. Dunham’s image was minimal. Ms. Dunham herself reported she was pleased with the outcome, and Jezebel’s readers excoriated the website for what they called a misguided and inappropriate crusade.

Nothing suggests that Jezebel thought Ms. Dunham is ugly, that Vogue thought so, or that Ms. Dunham failed to understand the aesthetic decisions necessary for a magazine that is selling glamour and fantasy to a largely female readership.

You don’t spend $10 000 for photos you think are “mildly retouched”. Lena looked chic, elegant and pretty. Jezebel forked out cash in an attempt to prove that Lena is NONE of those things, and her image was digitally created.

If that’s not calling someone ugly, I don’t know what is.

And what is up with this segment of the female population that is somehow so emotionally and intellectually fragile they can’t separate fiction from fact? Are you crippled by the unrealistic body standards of Batman or GI Joe? Do you weep giant man tears that you aren’t packing a set of muscles like the Hulk?

It’s complete crap that men are somehow capable of surviving idealized images of manhood but women are turned into oozing bags of goo when they see pretty women.

Thanks, but I am perfectly capable of sorting out which images are real and which ones aren’t.

I suppose if you can afford to, you might. But the money is circumstantial. Spending $10,000 doesn’t prove it was spent to undermine or insult Lena Dunham. Who is “chic, elegant and pretty,” although I recall you in another blogpost not being quite so amiable toward her.

In any event, Jezebel’s readership has taken the editors to task and done so severely. Jezebel does need to own its “shit,” as do we all. I don’t think the site is claiming doctrinal infallibility. I think Jezebel erred badly going after one of its favorite targets (unrealistic cover images) on behalf of one its other favorites (bright, sexually liberated young women about town, a la Lena Dunham’s TV characters).

You make a good point about fragility in the face (and what a face) of glamorous images. Some people do take their shortcomings personally. I don’t yet feel inadequate for not looking like the Hulk. But who knows? Maybe it’s too soon to call. If men are subject to another 45 or 50 years of the same kind of pressure on our appearances, maybe we’ll see a similar reaction. To be honest, I always thought that was a subtext of all that men’s rights bellowing: resentment that even liberated women want to sleep only with the cool guys (women seem wicked when you’re not wanted, like the fella said). And cool is as out of reach for most of us as when the epitomes were smaller scaled (the high school quarterback, the kid with the cool car, the skinny guitarist in a local band). We ordinary guys aren’t seeing ourselves in the media either, except as jokes. Right now it’s easier (nobler?) to go after “feminism” than to go after the media. But like I say, maybe we’ll see it differently in another generation.

Tyler

As has been said elegantly by Mrs. JB herself before, ‘women are human beings, men are human doings.’ A woman’s primary sexual asset has always been her appearance, a man’s primary sexual asset has always been his actions. Actions such as provision, protection, dominance, etc. A great body sure doesn’t hurt his chances, but it’s not the primary factor.

‘Unrealistic standards’ for men exist aplenty in the media: suave, swaggering action heroes who kick ass and always get the girl. I read it somewhere else in the ‘sphere, and it was so perfect accurate: ‘if you think the women in Bond films are sexualized and objectified, realize that James Bond himself is equally objectified as the pinnacle of male sexuality.’ Men and women have different measures of sexual attractiveness.

I will say that, while I don’t lose any sleep over the incredible bodies in men’s fitness magazines, something that does give me pause is reading about ‘alpha males’ in the manosphere. I wonder how alpha I am, how I can be more so without just acting like a joke, etc. I imagine it’s the male equivalent of female anxiety over beautiful women in media: how do I better display high-value sexual characteristics?

That said, I own up to that insecurity, I deal with it on my own, and I go about my day. Just one more page in the endless modern trend of separating women from responsibility.

Please don’t equate male and female circumcision, you sound like a fucking idiot. Wait, you sound like a fucking idiot every sentence you churn out. Ayn Rand is for idiotic 14 year olds. Does anyone active in philosophy today actually take her philosophy seriously? Guess what, no good academic discipline takes Ayn Rand seriously.

What on earth happened to you that made you so ignorant of almost absolutely everything? Did you grow up watching Alex Jones? Seriously, what’s wrong with you? There’s some kind of deeper neurosis at work here.

Let’s see. Type II Mullerian Genital Mutilation (you can drop the cisessentialist bullshit) removes the clitoral hood and the labia minora. Guess what the tissue that ends up being the foreskin if you get Wolffian genital development ends up being if you get Mullerian genital development?

But it’s true that you shouldn’t compare the two practices. American CAFAB babies aren’t dying of genital mutilation complications at a clip comparable to SIDS, more than 100 per year.

The reason you get horror stories about Mullerian Genital Mutilation is that where it’s performed, and the quality of hospitals there. And the prevalence of Wolffian Genital Mutilation is much higher.

If you want to use saneist language about deep neuroses motivating someone’s politics, we can talk about the narcissism that leads you to appropriate the suffering of someone you will never see, in a part of the world you will never see, and attempt to exploit it for political capital in the West.

Hey I just wanted to bring a fact to you. Women’s “inherent hysteria” is based on an absolutely ludacris medical theory from ancient times . Hippocrates, who funnily enough is referred to as “the father of western medicine,” coined the term hysteria. The name is derived from the ancient Greek word for uterus, hystera.

Here’s the great part: he named the disorder as such, because he believed the symptoms were exclusive to women and a result of the uterus literally floating around the inside of her body from head to toe. Its called the wandering womb syndrome, and was commonly accepted for centuries.

I consider myself a feminist and I love reading your articles. They are great food for thought. But please, it would be a complete injustice to modern medicine to resurrect this long-gone absurdity.